Hoops Limited Edition Box Set, page 121
“Searching hashtags again?” I ask, unable to staunch that familiar irritation.
“How else would I know what was going on in your life?”
“Why would you want to know?” I demand, exasperated. “I don’t get you, Bridget. You have an affair with one of my friends. You throw our marriage out the window—”
“Our marriage?” she asks, a double-edged sword of scorn and bitterness. “Is that what you called it?”
My mother, as angry as she was with Bridget, expressed sympathy for her because we were ill-matched.
Bridget tried to crack you like a nut. For the woman you love, though, really love, it’s not hard work. I didn’t have to crack your father. He spilled himself with me.
God, my mother was right. I don’t know that I did anything wrong, but there must have been some things with Bridget I didn’t do right. And now I see clearly that I couldn’t, would never have trusted myself, the real me, my inner self, with the person Bridget has proven herself to be. I don’t think I was capable of it with her.
“Look, Bridge, we’ve been at war with each other for years, and if what happened with Simone showed me anything, it’s the value of a second chance. We have a chance to clean the slate. I’m tired of fighting. It’s destructive, and we both have to move on.”
“With Lotus, you mean,” she says, her voice subdued. “You’re moving on with Lotus.”
“Yeah.” I meet the disappointment in her voice head-on. “With Lotus.”
I ignore her sharp breath and continue.
“I’ve been angry with you,” I admit. “For years, angry that our family, our life was ripped apart.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Bridget whispers.
“I’ve been angry,” I continue. “But I could never understand why you were angry, too. You’ve been angry with me for not being what you thought I would be. For not letting you in, for abandoning you in our marriage.”
“It doesn’t excuse what I did,” she says faintly. “I never meant to cheat on you. It just . . .”
I’m grateful she doesn’t say it just “happened.” Those things don’t just happen.
“It wasn’t all you,” I tell her, clearing my throat. “It was me, too. You used to talk about the wall that came up during the season, but it wasn’t only when I was playing ball. It was all the time. I’m a hard man to know, to reach.”
“But not for her.” Her words come out on a light breath, but land with a thud.
“No, not for her.” A wry half-smile crooks my mouth. “I don’t regret us, Bridge, because we have Simone, and she’s the best thing.”
“She is.” She chuckles softly on the other end, hesitating before rushing on. “Can you ever . . . could you forgive me, Kenan?”
I’ve simmered in resentment for years, and in this moment, all the pain and humiliation and awful things Bridget’s affair caused me rush to my mind.
Then other memories slowly start to sift in. Bridget, young and alone in a strange city with a newborn while I was on the road. So many missed birthdays, anniversaries, milestones, and times I knew there was something she needed, and had no clue how to give it to her.
Bridget and I haven’t been on the best terms the last few years, but I’ve known her half my life, was married to her for more than a decade. She gave me my daughter. There may not ever have been a time when I loved her the way she needed to be loved, and there may not ever have been a time when she truly saw me, understood me, knew the real me, but there was a time when we were friends. There was a girl I met in college who walked with me through the challenging transition into the NBA, through being a father when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Through my greatest accomplishments. I wish we could have focused on those things more instead of all the ways we failed each other, and now we have that chance.
“I’ll forgive you,” I say with a half-pained smile, “if you can forgive me.”
I don’t have to explain why I’m asking forgiveness. It’s fueled her own anger and frustration and hung over us for years.
“I can do that,” she says, the words tremulous. “Thank you, Kenan.”
It won’t be easy, and I have no doubt our anger and past hurts will resurface sometimes when we least expect it. Maybe it took this wake-up call for us to gain perspective on what’s most important—that it really is about Simone, and that maybe for her, we can set the past aside and focus on her future. Maybe for her, we can be friends again.
“Got everything?” I ask one more time before I leave Simone at the lush beach retreat where the dance camp is being held.
“Yeah.” She shifts the gym bag on her shoulder. “Grandma double-checked the list they gave us to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything.”
“Good. I’ll call you from the road. Our first game is Toronto and then Chicago and then San Antonio and then the Lakers. I’ll be back Saturday.”
When I look down at my daughter, a wave of gratitude overwhelms me. The “what ifs” have tortured me ever since the night we found her unconscious on my bed. My nightmares are made from dark alternate endings, and I’ve jerked awake more than once to rush down the hall and make sure she is real, not some grief-induced hallucination.
She’s beautiful and growing up fast. She’ll be fifteen soon, and won’t be thinking about her old man anymore. I’ve missed so much. Basketball has given me a lot, but it’s taken its money’s worth.
“I love you more than everything, Moni.” I kiss her forehead and press her head to my chest. “You know that, right?”
She glances up at me, her brows crinkling over her pretty blue eyes, and then nods.
“What?” I frown down at her. “What is it?”
“What happened to Lotus?”
I wish Dr. Packer were here right now. I’m not sure how to handle this. Simone knows I’m not seeing Lotus anymore, and I haven’t talked about her at all, so I’m not sure what prompted the question.
“Uh, she still lives in New York. Why do you ask, baby?”
“You seemed, I don’t know.” Simone shrugs her narrow shoulders. “You seemed happier when she was around.”
Damn, I miss her.
Isolation hits me with crushing force. My life is so much brighter with Lotus in it. I don’t speak. I’m still formulating the best answer—one that won’t unravel all that we’ve worked so hard to put together.
“It’s okay if you love her, too,” Simone says quietly.
I pull back and peer down into her face. Her eyes, when they meet mine, are sober. They’ve seen too much, know too much already.
“It is?” I ask tentatively.
“I want you to be happy.” She swallows, and looks down at the ground. “I want Mommy to be happy, too, but I know you don’t make each other happy anymore.”
“But we’ll always love you,” I say, cupping her face, “and always put you first, okay?”
She nods and offers a small smile. She’s a good kid. In spite of all the shit she’s been through. She’s the only good thing to come out of my marriage.
“Simone,” a tall, elegant woman calls. I remember meeting her at one of Moni’s recitals. “The other girls are all inside. Say goodbye and join us, please.”
“Coming, Madam Petrov,” Simone replies before turning back to me. “Gotta go.”
“Okay. Love you, Moni.” I swipe my hand down her face, our familiar expression of love. She smiles, looks happy. God, let it be real. Knowing your child is hurting in a way you can’t make stop or make better is the most helpless feeling in the world. You watch for any distress signal, strain to catch each sign of progress or hint of joy, with your breath held. With bated hope.
“Love you, Daddy.”
We’re gonna be okay.
It’s a refrain playing on repeat in my head as I drive back to San Diego. I loved talking with Simone on the way up, hearing about how well things are going at school and with dance. Giving her space to tell me how the meds make her feel better. Allowing her to tell me about the days when they don’t. Every word she shared, even those that were hard to hear, reassured me, because she’s sharing it. She’s not hiding it or keeping it to herself. She’s so much like me in a lot of ways, naturally burying her emotions and hoarding her thoughts.
But as much as I enjoyed our talk driving up to Laguna Beach, I revel in the silence on my drive home. It’s hard to describe to someone who doesn’t need it how refreshing being alone can be—not lonely at all, but alone. On this scenic stretch of highway, I have the breathtaking view of the ocean all to myself. The moon glimmers off dark blue water as I negotiate the twists of the Pacific Coast Highway. I put on my favorite song: “It Never Entered My Mind.” The opening strains of piano blend seamlessly, flawlessly with Davis’s trumpet. He sandpapered every note until it was smooth, dulcet tonal perfection.
Even as I relish my solitude, Lotus won’t leave me alone.
“What’s your favorite song to listen to when you want to unwind?”
“‘It Never Entered My Mind.’”
“Well, let it enter your mind.”
My laughter at the memory breaks the silence in the car, and I wish she were here beside me, curled up in the passenger seat talking about everything or nothing. I’d settle for her silence, her voice, her scent. I’d take anything of her I could get.
It makes me eager to get home—to put this road trip behind me and find a way to see her. I’ll speak with Dr. Packer and figure out when we can talk to Simone, what to say. It’s time to bring Lotus back into my life, into our lives.
I’m not-so-patiently stuck riding behind a slow truck carrying huge pipes when my headlights illuminate a chain anchoring the pipes as it pops loose. The pipe slides off the truck and toward me, headed for my windshield.
“Shit!”
I swerve, avoiding the pipe that lands in the road where my truck was mere seconds ago. Another pipe slips from the truck’s flatbed, bouncing on an unpredictable trajectory. The entire sequence takes seconds, but everything retards to a slow-moving, terrifying crawl. Inside of me, though, accelerant douses everything—my racing, pounding heartbeat, the blood rushing through my veins like river rapids, the quick, shallow breaths chopping up in my chest as my body deploys adrenaline to every vital organ.
The wheel slips through my hands as the truck hurtles toward the guardrail. In my mind, I see Lotus clutching her little saint, her face wreathed in fear and love by the flickering light of candles, eyes fixed on me, never looking away. All I hear is Lotus’s urgent recitation, the psalm falling from her lips with the determined persistence of raindrops pinging a tin roof.
It’s the last thing I hear before the groan and crash and moan of colliding metal take it all away.
CHAPTER 45 - LOTUS
“You ready to hit this J train?” Yari asks.
“In a minute.” I glance up from the dress I’m pinning for JP. “Isn’t this gorgeous?”
“Girl, yes.” Yari walks farther into the fitting room where the models usually try on the clothes. I’m working from a body form, though. “What’s that for?”
“A certain Hollywood actress wants to be wearing this when the Oscar goes to her,” I mumble around the pins in my mouth. “We’ve got plenty of time since she hasn’t even been nominated yet.”
We share a quick laugh. I get up and stretch from the long time on my knees. “Let me grab my stuff.”
My phone rings in my pocket as I’m walking back to my cubicle. Iris’s ringtone.
“Hey, Bo. What’s up?” I ask, motioning to Yari that we can keep walking out. “You calling to complain about how hungry my nephew is again? I’ve told you that formula—”
“Lo,” she breaks in. “No, I, um . . . that’s not why I’m calling.”
The somber note weighing her voice down stops me shy of the elevator. Yari stops, too, eyeing me curiously.
“Oh,” I say. “You sound funny, Bo. What’s up? The kids okay?”
“The kids are fine.” Her voice catches. “It’s, um, it’s Kenan, hon.”
All my bodily functions pause. Or at least, it feels that way. The whole building, the whole city, the whole world seems to stop for a second. I want to stay in this tiny window of time before I know how bad it is, before she tells me something that will demolish my heart and ruin my life.
“What about . . .” I clear my throat, but the fear doesn’t move. An unbudgeable dread gathers and ties knots in my belly. “What about him? He’s okay, right? Iris, he’s okay?”
The silence that follows blares in my ears. I pull the phone away and press it to my chest, closing my eyes and forcing myself to listen again.
“Lotus?” Iris asks. “You there?”
“Yeah. Just tell me.”
“He was in a car accident.”
“But he’s okay. He’s alive. I’d know if he weren’t.”
Iris’s skepticism reaches me across the phone—the same skepticism I get from Kenan. She thinks I make it up—that I’ve bought into some of MiMi’s old-lady nonsense. She doesn’t understand. She never really has.
My soul would know. I’d get goosebumps. The damn sky would open up and pour out fire. Somehow, some way, I would know if Kenan Ross had left this Earth.
“He’s alive, yeah. He’s in surgery now,” Iris says. “But it’s serious. You need to come. August is chartering a flight to get you here as quickly as possible.”
“Okay.” My body is all over the place. My heart has splintered into a million shards but my mind is so incredibly focused, as if I’m watching this all from an observation tower. It’s not happening to me. It can’t be happening to him.
Yari calls Billie, who meets us at the airport. I swing by our apartment and grab my stuff. A few items of clothing, my lunch box, salt, candles, St. Expedite. I’m fully prepared to make a fool of myself. I’m braced for skepticism and accusations of lunacy, but I refuse to give a fuck.
My friends have never seen this side of me. They watch me carefully as I sit in my seat, clutching the little figure in my hand and reciting Psalm thirty-five until my mouth is dry and cottony. I take up the litany in my head, barely blinking or breathing. I frantically assemble everything MiMi ever told me about life, about death and healing. The afterlife. The diaphanous walls that separate time from eternity—how they fall without notice, and the ones we love can so easily slip from this life into the next.
“Help me, MiMi,” I whisper with my head pressed to the cold window as we fly above the clouds. There’s no sign of pink. No cotton candy in the sky. “You said I have your heart. I truly believe that’s all I need. Don’t let me miss the things our eyes can’t see. I need you.”
Salty tears run hot and fast into my mouth, and I pray around them. I open my little lunch box-cum-sewing-kit and pull out all the notes Kenan sent me. There’s one I need. One I cling to.
“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death,
its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.”
– Song of Solomon 8:6
* * *
“Love is as strong as death,” I mutter, my eyes wide, not seeing the ocean below. “Love is as strong as death. Love is as strong as death.”
I’ve forgotten my friends, and only realize they’re still there when we land. Worry knits their brows and tightens their expressions. They think I’m losing it.
“Come on,” I say without further explanation. “Let’s go.”
The ride to the hospital is a blur. I don’t look out the window or make conversation or pretend I’m not worried. I don’t have time to accommodate people’s concern, their doubt. In the Uber, I press my forehead to the headrest of the passenger seat and close my eyes, blocking out the sounds of the city and erecting an impenetrable wall around my faith, my beliefs, my wild notions of life and death and what’s possible. I’m prepared for anything. I dive so deep inside myself searching for the heart MiMi left me, that it’s as if she’s in the car with me, not my friends. Her heart is my inheritance. My birthright. I take silent, certain possession of it.
“Um, we’re here,” Billie says.
I open my eyes and nod. A light rain falls as the car pulls up to the hospital’s emergency entrance. The three of us get out, bringing our suitcases with us. When we reach the waiting room, August and an older woman I don’t recognize are the first ones I see. Mack Decker, the front office executive whom I’ve met at a few functions with August, sits in the corner with a phone pressed to his ear. Iris rises from the boxy waiting room chair. At the sight of my cousin, the fragile hold on my composure slips and a sob flies free from the cage of my chest.
“Bo,” I cry brokenly.
Iris crosses the room immediately and her arms close around me, the comfort we’ve expected and given each other since we were kids flowing between us like a balm. My tears soak her hair, and I let myself go limp. I share my heart’s heavy burden, drawing strength from her she doesn’t even know she has.
After a few seconds, the pattern MiMi braided into my hair so long ago tingles, eyes in the back of my head deciphering the weight of someone’s scrutiny.
I turn from Iris’s embrace to face Bridget. Her cheeks are wet and splotchy, but resentment still burns in the ice-blue flame of her stare. She doesn’t want me here, but she would have to drag me from this hospital to get rid of me, and were she of a mind to listen, I’d advise her not to try.
Movement behind her distracts me from our stare down. The last time I saw Simone, she was unresponsive and EMTs were shoving a tube down her throat, intubating to save her life. Her face is so pinched with worry, she doesn’t look much better now. She slips one thin hand into her mother’s, I suppose an act of solidarity against me, the sworn enemy. I can’t be angry at her—can’t blame or hate her. She’s the most precious thing in Kenan’s world. I long to hold her. His blood runs in her veins. She has his mouth, his cheekbones, his DNA. She’s the closest thing to the man I love in this room, and if she’d let me, I’d give her a bone-cracking hug and lavish her with kisses.
